Bobby Bare Jr.’s life ignites ‘Storm’

Bobby Bare Jr.’s new album is titled A Storm — A Tree — My Mother’s Head.

Bobby Bare Jr. has written songs with titles such as “The Monk at the Disco,” “Snuggling World Championships” and “Mayonnaise Brain.” That might lead you to assume that the Nashville rock artist is a light-hearted guy with a healthy sense of humor — and you’d be right.

But Bare also isn’t afraid to inject a few serious subjects — and a horrifying incident— into his new album, A Storm — A Tree — My Mother’s Head, in stores Tuesday. There’s the somber title track, which recounts an evening in January 2008 when a falling tree split through his parents’ house and landed on his mother, breaking two vertebrae in her neck (she’s doing fine now). Then there’s “The Sky Is the Ground,” a rock number sung from the vantage point of his young son, who was riding his bike and ended upside down in a tree.
“You’ve got to write a song about stuff like that,” Bare says. “You’re only given so many opportunities to write about stuff that’s real.”

That’s a value, of course, that he’s had instilled in him since he was a kid. Bare’s dad is country veteran Bobby Bare. In 1974, a 5-year-old Bare was nominated for a Grammy for a duet he sang with his dad, “Daddy, What If.” That song was written by poet and songwriter Shel Silverstein, who used to critique Bare Jr.’s songs until his passing in 1999. The Bares produced a tribute album to Silverstein earlier this year, and his influence is felt on A Storm.

“Where most songwriters start to chicken out, that’s where he began,” Bare says. “That’s the only thing that anybody finds interesting, is what you would do once other people chicken out.”

Writing the album’s title track came naturally to Bare, but he says he couldn’t sing it to his mom until a year after the incident. He later brought her into the studio to scream on the song. You can hear her howling in the background as the song comes to a close.

“It was hilarious,” Bare says. “It was not laughing that was the hardest part. She was yelping like a little dog, so I had to tell her, ‘No yelping.’ I said, ‘No, I need a big, long, blood-curdling (scream).’ ”

Scream sessions aside, Bare tends to get down to business when he enters a recording studio. Most of Storm was recorded in a two-day studio session.

Bare will be playing Storm’s songs on tour through October (he’ll play The Basement in Nashville on Sept. 18). It doesn’t sound like he’ll mind.

“I like (this album) better,” he says. “I listen to it more than anything I’ve ever done.”

Contact Dave Paulson at dnpaulson@tennessean.com or by calling 615-664-2278.